Towards Better Participatory Planning: Guide to Place-making

Abstract

Planning field has been evolving at a fast pace towards much more decentralized structure. Move from government to governance, initiatives originating within the civil society and many drawbacks of traditional participation indicate that there is a need for different approaches to be researched. One of them is place-making, a movement stemming from the opposition towards top-down, expert based urban development. Until now, there have not been many papers analysing the movement, therefore in the thesis it is analysed in-depth in order to see how can it can be of benefit to participatory planning practices. Initially, a literature review was carried out to comprehend the existing knowledge on place-making. After, through conducted interviews with organizers and participants of the processes, a better picture of the process and cases in the Netherlands was obtained. Place-making process aims at redeveloping places with the use of local community and while appreciating local existing assets. It puts a great emphasis on activation and empowerment of the users of the place, to allow for better collaboration in the later stage of the process and ultimately transfer of lead to the users. Furthermore, it encourages creation of places in a sustainable way; via collaboration among diverse actors from the area, both from public, private and civic sphere. Lastly, place-making adds further steps than only gathering ideas, such as programming and managing of the place by local users, who feel the mental ownership of the place.